So You Think Your Room’s Bad, Pt. 6

Six installments in, we’ve arrived at the end of our tale about turning a trade show booth into a reference-quality home cinema space. But we’re not here to pat ourselves on the back. Yes, the demo room ultimately drew scores of visitors, and praise from the people who experienced it.

But this series of posts was meant to be inspirational, not self-congratulatory. Our aim was to encourage you to not give up on “problem” spaces until you’ve exhausted all the possibilities. The technology and expertise definitely now exist to turn rooms that would have once been dismissed as impossible into killer luxury home entertainment spaces.

Here are the key takeaways:

Even rooms with weird dimensions can make for a great home theater

If we had focused all of our design efforts exclusively on performance, there’s no way we would have chosen an overgrown bay window as the geometrical inspiration for our room. The hacked-off corners inside the room were driven by the various needs of the outside of the booth. But with the right choice of gear and some optimization with the speaker placement, we made this kooky space sound great.

Choose your speakers carefully—not all luxury speaker systems are made the same

This doesn’t mean that one speaker is necessarily the best answer for all applications. Speaker systems come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and configurations. Some are designed like audio spotlights. Some deliver a wider swath of sound. Some subwoofers are designed for in-ceiling placement. Of course, if you don’t have attic space to work with, you might opt for in-wall subs, or even discreet in-room subs (like we did). The point is, you shouldn’t just assume that a speaker is a speaker. Find the right solution for your unique room.

It wasn’t that long ago that the room-correction software solutions built into most surround sound systems created more problems than they solved, but in recent years they’ve made monumental improvements. These days, a good room correction system can practically eliminate the need for big bass traps and other gargantuan physical acoustical treatments. And the best of these solutions can even correct for sub-optimal speaker placement.

Since room correction still struggles with some acoustical problems, don’t turn your nose up at physical acoustical treatments. You may find that you can even work these treatments into your interior design.

Creating a premium entertainment space is a team effort, so pick your players wisely

If, for whatever reason, subtle acoustical treatments are an absolute no-no in your luxury entertainment space, encourage your integrator and designer to work together on alternative solutions. A carefully placed bookshelf or even draperies positioned in the right place can work wonders for the sound of your room. But this requires that all of the

GoldenEar’s Jack Shafton on the Finished Booth

GoldenEar VP of Marketing & Sales Jack Shafton co-authored the 3rd installment of this series with Dennis Burger. Here’s his reaction to experiencing the completed booth at the CEDIA convention in San Diego this past September:

“Upon seeing the finished product when the show opened, I was impressed with how the booth turned out (it looked great and highly functional), and also alarmed by the openness of the demo space. There was already a big crowd milling about the booth (kudos to Kaleidescape) and the theater demo was standing room only. The space was basically open to the show floor, just behind a draped entryway. I waited for the next showing and grabbed a seat before the room filled. I should have known, but the demo of Baby Driver caught me by surprise—this system, in this terrible room, just rocked! And other than the small subs, the sound system was basically invisible. It presented a seamless bubble of sound around and above with pinpoint imaging, and the the subs made the air move with a thunder. Of course I kept thinking ‘louder, make it louder’ because it was fun—although they had chosen a good compromise on volume level. I got the impression after the demo that the other people in the room would have liked to kick back and watch the whole movie!”

players respect one another and their specific design expertise. There will always be some give-and-take. All parties will have to compromise at some point. But if you can find collaborators who know when to hold ‘em and when to fold ‘em, your luxury entertainment space will be all the better for it.

If you’re ready to tame a problem space but aren’t sure where to look for help, the Home Technology Association (HTA) can be a great resource. And, by continuing to showcase unusual but successful home entertainment rooms, we at Cineluxe will do whatever we can to lend a hand.

Before we wrap this up, we’d like to thank some of the greatest experts in the business—in particular, Jack Shafton at GoldenEar, Jon Herron at Trinnov, and Anthony Grimani at PMI—for making our pitifully small demo room sound way bigger and better than it ever should have. And we’d like to wish all of you luck with turning your own problem rooms into amazing sight and sound experiences.

—Dennis Burger & Michael Gaughn

Dennis Burgeris an avid Star Wars scholar, Tolkien fanatic, and Corvette enthusiastwho somehow also manages to find time for technological passions including high-
end audio, home automation, and video gaming. He lives in the armpit of Alabama with
his wife Bethany and their four-legged child Bruno, a 75-pound American Staffordshire
Terrier who thinks he’s a Pomeranian.